This is the dedicated blog, of a Fragrance Connoisseur and Writer, Shaneela Rowah Al-Qamar. Its the BEST place to read about and learn about Arabian, Oriental or Oud based fragrances, perfume niches, Attar - and fragrances in general! Enjoy! :)

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Tuesday, 22 November 2016

Faeces for Perfume? Well, This Is Bill Gates’ Hand On A New Fragrance…

…Not a very nice thought, for the start of a fragrance Blog post, right?! Well, it’s all good! :) In recent news, there has been that buzz in the air about a new development within the fragrance industry – but the news is not to do with some magical new fragrance note, or a flower shrub from the planet Mars that produces a wonderful scent – though that would be interesting! No! It’s all about poop… that other scent, albeit repulsive, that us human species produce. Yukk!!

It has been reported widely all over the internet and on the news, that in its aim of improving healthcare and helping to eradicate poverty, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be funding the creation of a brand new perfume, which will – wait for it – smell like human feces! This is a project being led by non-other than Firmenich with the goal of developing odour free toilets and improving sanitation in the poorest countries of the world. These new toilets with help to stop sewage from entering water and eventually of course halt the spreading of diseases such as diarrhoea.

With funding from Bill Gates’ foundation, researchers at Firminech used a perfume that smelled like human feces and then developed fragrances that help to block the olfactory receptors located within our noses and this allows us to reject out those bad smells – just like olfactory fatigue that we experience when sniffing too much nose candy at our local fragrance parlour! This contrasts with the usual idea of using fragrances to mask bad odours found in toilets, which of course is not very effective. The faecal perfume was created by isolating the specific compounds that are responsible for the bad odour and then recreating the odour using synthetic compounds. Want to find out more? Check out this video about Bill Gates’ perfume project: